


As Blue As Violets

by InsolitaParvaPuella



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Group Marriage, Handfasting, Old New Borrowed Blue, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Weddings, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsolitaParvaPuella/pseuds/InsolitaParvaPuella
Summary: The story of a marriage told in four parts.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Marianne von Edmund/Ingrid Brandl Galatea
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3
Collections: Just Married Exchange 2020





	1. Something Old

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).



> A lot of the worldbuilding here comes from medieval Swedish wedding traditions, which I think have a similar mix of Catholic and decidedly not-Catholic practices that the Church of Seiros does. So apologies to all the Swedes out there.

Though Ingrid is much too young to be married yet, in the eyes of Faerghus law she is as good as wed. There is only the wedding and bedding itself left to do. She doesn’t think about it very much, except to be happy that Glenn is fun and nice to her, and to remember that Felix will be her brother one day. Her brother by blood is too far from her in age to be fun, so she is grateful the Goddess is giving her a second chance to get a Proper Brother.

Sometimes she goes to the family chapel. Father reminds her to go say her prayer and she does that, thanking the Goddess for her crest and all the blessings in her life, like Father says. But she doesn’t always do it right away. The family chapel is small and pretty like a doll's house, and the Galatea family treasures live here, too. Not all of them; Mother’s jewels live in a box on a shelf she is not allowed to touch, and the bridal jewellry made for her and Glenn is in her dowry chest. But the oldest ones, the ones with proper history in them, live here.

If she asks politely, the priest unlocks the chest in the back room and lets her look at them, turn them over in her little fingers. Her grandmother’s engagement brooch, a gold and enamel white rose, is her favourite. She can recall her grandmother wearing it on important holidays, and on the day her engagement was made official. The others are older, their craft less delicate, but still pretty. There’s her great-grand-uncle’s brooch, with twisted strands of metal forming a silver heart with a golden crown. The oldest of the brooches is the Crest of Daphel enameled on a golden base. Ingrid doesn’t remember what member of the family wore it, and she doesn’t like to pick it up. Too old and too important, according to Father.

And at the bottom of the chest, in a small wooden box lined with plush velvet, is the chapel’s best treasure. Under the priest’s watchful eyes, Ingrid is allowed to crack open the box. At first, all that’s visible are the pearls at the end of each long, gold spike. Using her most careful, delicate touch Ingrid pulls the little crown from its box. The gold and pearls shimmer in the diffuse light. It’s small, only slightly larger around than her own little hand. She cradles it softly in both her calloused hands, turning it slowly to watch the metal and pearls shimmer in the diffuse light.

Ingrid imagines herself wearing it sometimes. Its purpose is to hold a lace veil in place, and so she will get the chance to wear it once she is grown and properly married. But it is special amongst the treasures in the chapel. The rest belongs to her family, to do with as they please. But the crown is the chapel’s, and it is loaned out to all virtuous brides who are wed there. There is something magical about it, a treasure that belongs to the chapel, to the Goddess herself, and is worn by brides of every status. So long as she remains noble of heart, Ingrid will get to join the long line of happy brides of Galatea, including her mother and grandmother.

The priest reminds her to put it away carefully, and so she lowers the crown bit by bit into the box and puts it away. The other pieces of jewellry are put away as well, and the humble chest is locked up. Then Ingrid goes to say her prayer to the Goddess, thanking Her for all the blessings in her life, especially the crest that means she will be a happy bride someday.


	2. Something New

The war is over.

Ashe writes the phrase in his journal, and then once more because it is the only thought in his head. Jubilant, he underlines it with a flourish. _The war is over!_ Fódlan is united, the Church is under the control and care of Professor Byleth, and five years of suffering has come to a close. There is so much work left to do. Faerghus' army is still occupying Enbarr and the former Empire has loyalists who will not surrender. Terms of peace need to be passed, terms of unification decided upon, the three different systems of rule must be reconciled.

Ashe doesn’t have much of a head for those sort of things, but Dimitri insists Ashe be present regardless, because Ashe remembers what it was like to be a hungry child with no refuge. The new kingdom, whatever it is called and however it is ruled, must have the common people at its center. _If a single child starves, that is my failure_ , Dimitri wrote in his first of many letters to the people of Fódlan, aided by the wisdom of his companions.

But no, tonight is not for work. For a handful of hours, nearly everyone has been given time to themselves. It is a rare gift, and Ashe means to use it wisely. He closes his journal; he can record his thoughts later, for now there’s something more pressing to think on. He has yet to decide who will act as his guardian in the coming negotiations, and there will need to be a lot of negotiations. He starts writing his list of pros and cons on the back of a requisition slip he’d made some weeks before.

It cannot be a member of House Gaspard. If Gaspard territory is dissolved or reshaped, Ashe will no longer be in line to inherit and no one from House Gaspard will have standing, and Ashe will not ask for a noble title from His Highness. That is unlikely, though. He is almost certainly going to receive the title if the current borders are preserved, and then none of the distant relations will have standing to represent him, personally or politically. He might have turned to a member of House Rowe, given how they were caretakers of Gaspard after Lonato’s passing, but when they announced themselves for the Empire they lost all good standing in the Kingdom.

Their betrayal also forced Ashe (with his loyalty to Dimitri openly declared and well-known) on the run and his siblings put into the care of one of Lonato’s second cousins on a small parsonage. He’s not ready to forgive House Rowe. And that leaves his friends, all of whom could claim standing politically, personally, or both. He thinks about asking Felix, but Felix has enough to worry about without taking on a complicated guardianship. Sylvain has less to concern himself with at present, but Ashe cannot imagine Sylvain being happy to negotiate any marriage, let alone one that includes Ingrid.

Annette might be willing, he thinks. They are good friends, and she is one of the smartest people he knows. Negotiating a triple-marriage between three (or perhaps two, with his own nobility uncertain) heirs of noble houses is bound to be one of the trickiest problems anyone could present her with, but she’s untangled notoriously difficult knots of logic before and mastered a branch of reason magic. There’s no reason to doubt her skill. Annette Fantine Dominic of House Dominic would make a fine guardian in this case.

He’s putting the cart before the horse, at least a little. He’s not asked either Marianne or Ingrid about marriage, at least formally. Once he’d mentioned a dream of a wedding with white roses and warm sand while cleaning his armour after battle, and they’d been as wistful about it as him. But that had been during the war, when there was no guarantee of survival and everyone was dreaming about what they could do during peacetimes.

Ashe doesn’t know how to ask. He’s reasonably sure that for nobles, and even common folks with some land and money, the first suggestion of marriage is to be done by a designated guardian to the family of the intended. His stomach turns a little at the idea. The marriage record for his parents had no guardian signatures, only witnesses, when he checked it; they likely scrimped and saved for the funds to be permitted to marry and arranged the match themselves. And for Ashe to ask Ingrid’s father for her hand when he knows how troubled she’s been by arranged matches would be the height of insensitivity, if nothing else.

No, he needs to make his first proposal directly, to both of his lovers. But how? If the war was still ongoing he’d concede to restrictions of the day: no luxury, no rings, only a bouquet of violets and a sincere wish for their hearts to be bound together by the Goddess. Even now, the army’s coffers are empty, his own purse spent on survival and sending some money to support his siblings, and the fortunes of House Gaspard out of reach and likely spent to support the traitorous Dukedom.

Ashe’s pen halts. He wants, more than anything, to ask Marianne and Ingrid for their hands. If five years and a war was not enough push his feelings out of his mind, nothing will. He has the blessing of his siblings, who expressed only delight at the thought of their brother in a triple-marriage. He is confident that both Marianne and Ingrid are open to the thought of marriage. He only needs to find the right way to ask. Something settles in his chest, the same cool confidence when he's on his wyvern and aiming an arrow at a distant mage. He knows his arrow will meet its mark whenever he chooses to let it fire, and he knows Marianne and Ingrid will say yes, once he finds the moment to ask.

(In two months Ashe will be in Garreg Mach, just before he, Ingrid, and Marianne part ways for the first time in ages. He’ll ask them on the bridge, and Ingrid will laugh because she was planning on asking the same thing, and Marianne will reveal she had a similar plan in between delighted kisses. The only one to see will be Byleth, smiling gently and giving them her blessings from afar.)

-.-

The Margravate of Edmund has wealth and standing, but none of it is ancestral. When Marianne returns, she brings news from Enbarr of surrender, of unity within Fódlan, of the end of war. She also has a secret, shared with her adoptive father on their first supper together in over a year.

“Father, I wish to be married,” she says, and the Margrave celebrates her with wine and sweets when he hears the news: two heroes of the war wish to make her a bride in the first noble triple-marriage in over a century! No matter how she tries to temper his expectations (the Archbishop may not permit it, the negotiations may be too complex, Ashe’s inheritance is still theoretical) her father’s joy will not be dampened.

During her stay in Edmund Marianne and the Margrave have work to do. Leicester’s reunion with Faerghus had hardly begun before Adrestia was brought in as well, and unification means all the border territories have disputes. Daphnel wishes to absorb Galatea, Ordelia wants reparations for the Empire’s interference. Margrave Edmund speaks to the nobles of Leicester of peace, his war-hero daughter pleading for old grudges to be put aside for the sake of new unity. In private, Marianne consults with a jeweller for the creation of rings with gemstones as blue as violets, and her father commissions a new bridal crown from a Derdriu goldsmith. Rumours fly that the war-hero heir of Edmund is to be wed.

Many of the rumours are false, of course. After facing fire and blood together many of the young heroes of the war share intimate friendships. The sheer number of rumours flying around Felix alone makes believing any one of them impossible. The rumours go that Marianne is to be wed to Sylvain or Hilda or King Dimitri or that she’s already gone through a handfasting with a common lover from the Officer’s Academy and now must be properly married. Some correctly guess Ingrid or Ashe (though never both), but Marianne does not let her face betray her.

To quell the rumours, Margrave Edmund delivers an address to all the gathered nobles of the former Alliance. It is not a long address; he shows them the commissioned bridal crown and speaks of how it could pay for a battalion of soldiers to be armed. But those soldiers will not need to leave their farms and families again to raise arms, because there is peace.

“For peace, my daughter took up the sword and book. But now, happy Marianne, you shall marry!” he announces, and the nobles cheer. After the address, the people talk of how Margrave Edmund is spending his fortune on peace through happy unions, and the specifics of who Marianne shall marry are left to quiet speculation.


	3. Something Borrowed

When Dorothea begins to sing the wedding hymn, all the guests fall silent. The song and the hush of the waves gives the beach the dignity of an ancient chapel. The guests cast their eyes in all directions, looking for the three who are to be married. Each of them is delighted to see a friend happily wed, with the thrill of seeing a triple-marriage for the first time making the air hum with excitement.

From behind the crowd comes Marianne. She’s wearing a silver dress, one that would show her arms if not for the long silk gloves she wears, with a train dragging across the soft sand. A shining bridal crown keeps her veil in place. She walks between her friends, seated comfortably in the sand, escorted by her father. Halfway through they stop, and she kisses Margrave Edmund’s cheek. Then she steps away and continues to walk alone, met by her own true loves as they come in from either side, walking along the shore. Count Galatea and Ashe’s brother and sister find their seats amongst friends and family as Margrave Edmund also takes a seat.

Ingrid reaches out first, taking one of her lover’s hands in each of hers. She is in her dress uniform, the fabric as blue as violets, a lover’s brooch next to her medals and the family’s bridal crown held in place by her braids. She looks ecstatically happy, her eyes bright and soft as she speaks, only loud enough for the other two to hear. There is no priest, no archbishop, to make this ceremony official. For a triple-marriage between a noble and two heirs there must be a proper ceremony, held at Garreg Mach monastery, for all the nobles and high-ranking members of the clergy to witness. And there will be.

But just for the moment, Archbishop Byleth has lent them the power to make marriages. They’ll make promises, and in the eyes of the Goddess they’ll be married. And then they will say the proper vows in the proper place and be married in the eyes of the country in a few month’s time.

Ashe is the first to make his public vows. He lifts Ingrid’s and Marianne's hand, with their sparkling engagement rings, and says, clearly and plainly, “I am offering myself to you, to be your husband, partner, and friend in life. I can offer only my love and my promise to support you, if you will have me.” When Ingrid and Marianne say yes, he has to duck his head to hide his tears, and his circlet of white rose buds nearly slips off.

Ingrid offers herself, her voice strong. She’s known the words since she was a child, but she pronounces them now with her whole self, her smile like the sun. This is not rote repetition. When Ashe and Marianne say yes, she laughs with delight for a moment. The guests see her as a bride and knight and noble lady all at once, every dream and expectation given to her carried with ease and grace.

There are tears sliding down Marianne’s cheeks as she recites the words. Her voice does not fade or tremble. She is the happy bride who, by her marriage, will build a stronger, better peace in Fódlan. She is the happy bride who enters into a contract with her best beloveds, her heart so overful of joy that it’s spilling from her eyes. Yes, say her bride and groom, and the contract is sealed.

The guests clap and laugh in delight, the sound of them carrying over the ocean’s susurrus. The happy trio embraces and it is impossible to tell who is kissing whom, only that Ashe’s rosebud circlet has fallen into the sand at last.

It is only the trio's nearest and dearest friends and family at this wedding, and all of them occupy one of Margrave Edmund’s parlours for dinner and drinks that evening. They take turns to congratulate the newlyweds, embracing each other, kissing the brides and groom for luck, and offering wedding gifts.

Speeches are offered constantly. All a guest has to do to speak is pluck up some courage and find some words to say, and there is no lack of either that night. Byleth blesses them, their eyes twinkling with some secret knowledge. Annette proclaims her joy and pride in this match, and Mercedes offers a congratulation to Annette for making such a marriage possible (which gets an enthusiastic cheer and Annette humbly blushing). There is a round of singing led by Dorothea.

Because this wedding is only somewhat official, the guests offer only somewhat official gifts. The silver weapons, the bottles of foreign wine, and the brand-new riding gear are all gifts that are meant to appeal to the recipients, despite not being the traditional gifts given from _or_ to nobles at a wedding. The book of erotic poetry with an anonymous giver gets a few chuckles as word of it spreads. It’s precisely the kind of gift that will not be given in a few month’s time.

When the wine has been sufficiently drunk and the party is beginning to wind down, a chorus of bawdy drinking songs begin. Most of the guests are not singers, and so it is enthusiasm and not tunefulness that sends the newlyweds from the parlour, through the halls, to their bedroom with a parade of revellers behind. Not everyone is in the parade, but enough are that the bedroom is cramped as Ingrid, Marianne, and Ashe are pushed into bed still in their wedding clothes and tucked in. Ashe is flushed and laughing and singing along. Marianne is embarrassed, but smiling all the same. Ingrid sends glares to anyone making suggestive jokes (and there are a lot of suggestive jokes).

The completion of the bedding marks the end of the wedding. Many of the guests accept Margrave Edmund’s offer for a place to spend the night, and so in the morning there will be a celebratory breakfast feast, a handful of teasing remarks, and well-wishes all around. What the newlyweds do that night remains solely their business.


	4. Something Blue

A year after the wedding in Garreg Mach, the first noble triple-marriage in over a century is still the occasional topic of gossip. None of them mind. Theirs was the first great marriage in the peacetime after the war—people were bound to talk no matter what they did. It only makes their choice to do what makes them happy all the wiser.

On this warm Sunday afternoon, things are comfortable in Castle Gaspard. Ashe is at the writing desk, penning a letter to his brother at the Officer’s Academy. Gaspard is in his care for now, until his brother is ready to inherit and the trio will move to Edmund. It will be a little while yet before his education is complete, even once he’s graduated from the Officer’s Academy, but Ashe is confident his brother will make a good lord. He’s smart, and remembers the struggles of poverty and terrors of war; compassion and wisdom will be the guiding lights for Gaspard under his brother’s rule.

For a moment, Ashe leans back and stretches. Living in Castle Gaspard with his brother and sister has been good after so long apart. They changed so much during his years of near-exile, and though they didn’t resent his absence, he hates having missed so much. After a week of being able to sit at the same dinner table with his siblings and spouses and eat his fill without worry, he’d broken down into tears. And he was so thoroughly Goddess-blessed that Ingrid and Marianne understood and let him cry, Ingrid’s hand in his hair and Marianne’s touch firm on his back while his brother and sister hugged him.

He glances to the loveseat near the window. Ingrid is reading, her foot resting on a cushioned footstool and leaning on Marianne, who is admiring the outdoors. The cat, Ser Felicity, is napping on her lap. He wishes he had any talent for art, so he could capture the scene outside his memory.

The weather outside is perfect for flying, Ingrid despairs, but she is not allowed to fly until her ankle is well. Marianne has used white magic to speed along the healing, but straining herself now would only agitate the injury again and spoil the effort to heal her. Still, a perfect summer afternoon can be spent in several ways. With Marianne breathing soft and slow at her side, Ingrid is lulled into the perfect quiet of reading.

It’s a book Ashe found last month; she loves to read, but his childhood of illiteracy has made him a _voracious_ reader, determined to one day catch up to and surpass his peers in words read. And that has made him an excellent resource for book recommendations. This title is light and humorous, a comedy of manners about a bumbling (if well-intentioned) noble and his wise, world-weary knight facing the scheming of Leicester nobility. Every so often she’s needed to stop and ask Marianne about a detail of Leicester politics in order to understand a joke, but it’s otherwise a pleasant, breezy read.

At the end of the chapter she pauses, gazing out the window. There’s a small garden and then vast grazing fields, perfect for a leisurely ride. Next Sunday, she hopes, the weather will be as good and the three of them can ride together, on horseback or flying. Peace suits Ingrid well, but she does miss being able to fly daily at Garreg Mach, even if it was meant to be training for battle. She lets her head drop to Marianne’s shoulder for a minute, closing her eyes.

Peace is busy. There are always two dozen things that need doing and only time for half of them. She is a caretaker of Gaspard, and though rule of the County of Galatea will go to her brother, she is still Ingrid Brandl Galatea, determined to do what she can to aid the people she grew up with. Her ties to Edmund give her more resources, now, but her ties to Galatea are more indirect. There is more politicking to be done to bring the boons of Edmund to Galatea, and it was never her dream to do this.

But the peace is now hers to safeguard. King Dimitri’s rule is one determined, above all else, to raise the circumstances of the lowest common folk, and peace is necessary for this. His friendship with the Archbishop means that though Church and State may disagree on details, they are in harmony on the larger issues. Overtures of friendship to and from Almyra may end the eternal sniping across the mountains, if the rumours are to be believed.

And the King has established one more safeguard in the name of peace: the Knights of Peace, who maintain their strength and skill and are only to employ it for the sake of the common folk’s safety. It is not the knighthood Ingrid dreamed of as a child, but few of her childhood dreams have come to pass in the ways she expected. She is a knight whose greatest desire is to never be needed to serve. She is a bride, though she could not have guessed that she would be in a triple-marriage, or that her relationship would be an icon of unity.

Ingrid adjusts her posture slightly, lifting her head from Marianne’s shoulder, and returns to her book. There will be time to unpack those childhood dreams, spread them out and let her lovers see those treasures of her heart. But for now, the noble and his knight have a seductress to stymie and a blackmail plot to accidentally foil.

Marianne relaxes her shoulder a little. Her thoughts are quiet. The perfect summer afternoon will soon become a perfect summer evening, and she will be able to tour the gardens with her husband and wife and tell them her surprise.

For the moment, she lets Ser Felicity purr softly into her stomach, running her hands over and over through her soft fur. Her silk gloves are waiting on the armrest. Despite Ashe and Ingrid’s assurances, the gloves are a small bit of a vanity she allows. The callouses from her sword training have softened, but the scarring from reason magic remains as stark as ever. There are ways to reduce the scarring and discolouration, of course, but Marianne didn’t use any of them at first. It had taken Lorenz sharing his own supply of salves and lotions to get her to start tending to the damage caused by magic, and by then some permanent damage had been done.

So now she wears gloves in public, despite the knowledge that no one who matters would mind seeing those scars. But she minds them being seen, and so she is rarely seen without her gloves, except by her own nearest and dearest. At any rate, the scarring does not mute the sensation of how soft Ser Felicity’s fur is, or the rumble of her soft purring. With a slow, deep inhale Marianne imprints this moment in her mind. In a few hours she’ll share the secret that she’s kept at the corner of her smile. She’s already put in an order of yarn, blue as violets, that she will be putting to good use.


End file.
